“I expect Nokia’s performance to strengthen for the full year 2019 versus 2018 and our view of a fast and meaningful shift to 5G remains unchanged. Given that 5G rollouts will be staggered over the course of the year, we expect 2019 to have a soft first half followed by a robust second half,” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said.

Nokia did not reveal the number of 5G deals it won in 2018. Ericsson said it grabbed 10 commercial deals for its 5G network. Huawei said it has 30 deals for supplying 5G mobile network to telecoms.

Nokia’s 33 percent of total revenue came from North America, 21 percent from Europe, 19 percent from Asia Pacific, 10 percent from Greater China, 9 percent from Middle East and Africa and 7 percent from Latin America.

Nokia said Networks business’s spending towards operating expenses were higher due to trials related to 5G, as well as higher pre-sales expenses to drive future growth and higher returns.Nokia deployed its 5G site for South African operator, rain, with the full rollout of Nokia’s AirScale radio access network solution scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2019.

Telenor will deploy Nokia’s AirGile cloud-native core solution to transform the operator’s mobile network operations in Denmark, Sweden and Norway as it prepares for 5G in those markets. Telenor later said it will select a 5G vendor after its 5G pilots.